I Pray You’ll Change Your Mind

It doesn’t matter which god we’re speaking about – I don’t care if you’re speaking of God, Jesus, Allah, Thor, Zeus, Ra or any of the other thousands of gods that have been worshiped on this planet since humans came into being.

Do I believe there is something greater than humans and human intelligence? Yes.

Do I believe in something greater than humans the way religion (any religion) says I must believe? No

How can I hold both beliefs? In my mind, it’s easy. There is an order to our existence that speaks to something larger than what we can currently explain with logic, reason and science. I hold every confidence that things that are currently unexplainable now, will have a logical explanation in the future.

One only has to look at history, and acknowledge it, to know this to be true. For example, at one time, people believed the earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around it. Beliefs that were held only a few decades ago are even now being challenged. Young teenagers today have no idea what it means to wait for the internet to connect, or the meaning behind the phrase “dial a phone number”, or that remote controls (for anything) didn’t exist at one time. Imagine what people a hundred years from now will believe about our current beliefs?

Because I’m agnostic, I don’t think someone is going to hell just because they love someone of the same sex as themselves.

Because I’m agnostic, I don’t believe that going to a specific gathering on a specific day with specific people for a specific reason and performing specific actions will ensure my soul rests peacefully in heaven for eternity.

Because I’m agnostic, I will not dismiss your claim of having an “out of body” experience of “seeing the other side” of this life and what it will offer us.

Because I’m agnostic, I find it hard to believe that when I close my eyes for the last time on this earth, that they won’t open to another unknown experience.

Just because I hold these beliefs for myself, does not mean I will condemn you for holding different beliefs than I do. Just because I don’t believe the way you do does not mean that I won’t think about ways to make your spiritual journey easier for you.

Recently, I purchased a book for a close relative of mine who is just starting on her spiritual walk with Jesus. Upon seeing the book, I instantly thought about her and how she might enjoy it on several different levels, including the religious one. The day I gave it to her, her mother saw it and commented to me, “This is a surprisingly thoughtful gift for someone who claims to not believe in God.”

I replied with, “Just because I do not believe does not mean that I’m going to dismiss your, or anyone else’s, beliefs.”

“I know. Just know that I still pray that you’ll change your mind one day.”

I looked at her for a moment and asked, “How would you feel if I stated, ‘I hope you quit believing in God’?”

She replied with a startled look, “I would tell you that’s not going to happen!”

6 Comments:

Karaboo, this is an interesting ending. As a believer I find a little incongruence with your comments to your relative’s mother. You indicate through much of the post that you will not be upset or condemn others for what they believe, but you seem to have taken enough offense by her statement that she will pray for your belief. for a believer prayer is not the same as hope and attempting to align the two is difficult us. It’s a false equivalency, to bring forward the new phrase we all use thanks to our current presidency. And I attend a church with two people who had the same response as you did to those who prayed for them one day to change their mind. One was an atheist and one was Jewish who converted to Christianity a couple of years ago.The Jewish believer actually threatened to divorce her husband if he did not stop asking her about Christianity. Yet one day, something happened.

Now I do also feel as the person in your story that it would not happen, but I’ve been asked something similar, which is “What would it take for me to stop believing?” and what it would take would be to have everything that currently is explained to me by Scripture and nowhere else, to be explained without a shadow of a doubt somewhere else. That would be my answer to your questions as well. The big one is the origin of life and the universe. I have had wonderful conversations/debates with agnostics and atheists who were trying to understand the reasoning for my beliefs. One recent one went on for nearly 1,000 replies on a financial forum in their off-topic section. In the end we all agreed to disagree, but I did gain a lot of respect from several of them because I provided very reasonable explanations for why the preponderance of the evidence we do have still points very strongly to a creator and also to the Christian God. I’d steer readers to “Allah or Jesus?” by Nabeel Qureshi as a great text on one aspect of this. Several of the atheists were going to read it.

I’ve seen a couple people for who it was “never going to happen” have it happen to them. If you truly are as disengaged from concern about what people believe and what they do as you say you are, it was just surprising that you felt this question so offensive or irritating enough to write a post about. It is after all totally what any Christian would say.

I appreciate your response – thank you.
The fact that my post has garnered two separate, opposing, comments shows that I did not express myself clearly – OR – shows that people read into a brief story their own beliefs, thoughts and feelings.
Neither my relative or myself are irritated or offended by the other’s belief. After this conversation, we sat down and discussed our thoughts and beliefs for an additional 30 minutes. I typed the post because we have the same discussion about twice a year. My comment to her is something I’ve never said before to anyone and was curious what her reaction and comment would be. Based on her response, and subsequent discussion, she’s never had anyone say that to her in the past.
What I didn’t include in my post is the religious upbringing and exposure to religion I have had in my life. I have been baptized (both as a babe and as an adult), I’ve been to many different denominational churches, I’ve listened to religious teachings (both recorded, radio and in person), I have studied ancient religions and I have come to the conclusion that no one belief system is correct in that there is only one true God. If that was true, then everyone would either believe in that God without question or not believe in any god at all.

Why should it be okay for non-believers be told “you’ll believe one day” but believers not be told “one day you’ll no longer believe”? That is what my post is about and seems to be a double standard in my mind.

Oh, I see. For me it is okay if someone told me “one day you’ll no longer believe”.

I however have spent the better part of three years studying in depth to arrive where I am at. This included material from both sides of the fence, various defenses of the major belief systems and from that I have arrived where I am, therefore if I was told that and the person wanted to understand what it would take (which as I said is actually the question I DO get quite often) I’d explain it and that usually leads to a much deeper discussion of the evidence for what I do believe. This is very, very deep and as I indicated in my initial comment can run to 1,000 replies back and forth.

With regard to your “if” statement at the end, I would disagree strongly. I think there are too many aspects of discovery here that have no possible discoverable evidence that we can reasonably expect to ever have found. It is as impossible to PROVE there is no God as it is to prove there is one, and if there is not one, nothing will continue to happen to change that and if there is then perhaps one day God will appear and remove any doubt. Until then, in most debates people just walk back to their corner until something compelling enough moves them to another corner. That’s why I strongly disagree. I believe, and believe there is compelling evidence that there is one true God, but I also understand that using the scientific method is not capable of proving that which makes it unlikely that everyone believes without question. What I look for is scientific evidence that does not align with the God of the Bible and none has yet surfaced (if truly interested scholars more versed than I in explaining why have written volumes about it). This is not true of any other religious system which has been shown to have inconsistencies with core (not manipulated by man) teachings. And therefore because of this stack of evidence that is quite convincing to many you will not arrive at no one believing in God. However making the leap that because we are not 100% at either end of the scale points to the fact that it must be false is not a evidentially supported stance, in my opinion.

GOOD FOR YOU!
Everyone has a right to the joys and comforts that their religious beliefs give them. It is also true that those that are agnostic or atheists have the same rights to whatever joys and comforts they received from their belief systems. The world is NOT populated by only one belief system. And those that are NOT of one’s belief system DO NOT need to be patronized, insulted, mocked or condemned (even in polite tones) or worst discriminated and persecuted!

I myself was once Catholic, but I got over that! I was agnostic from decades and believed much as you. Then I was called back to my ancestral religious beliefs and became, that dreaded, HEATHEN!
BTW, the word heathen is the Germanic language word for the same Roman word pagan. Both mean one who lives in the ‘heath’ (country) and believes in their ancestral gods and ways. Rome had NO problem with the pagans or heathens when they conquered them, they just added their gods to the ‘state’ ones. As long as the ‘locals’ gave the State homage, all was great! It was when Paul (not Jesus) created a ‘religion’ modeled on the STATE of Rome and outlawed all other gods that the troubles started. It was Paul (Saul) who created the religion of Christianity (taking Jesus from many that were out there in those days) with the intent on building a ‘spiritual’ empire like Rome’s physical one. To do that it, the new religion, had resorted to spreading the word and condemning others and we have seen the results since!

The self-righteousness ones, when called on their own ignorance of the rights of others, retreat into their limited world view and write you off as a lost pagan, heathen, unworthy etc. They are the ones who are LOST not you!

There are vast differences between revealed religions and autochthonous or indigenous religions.

The ancient Egyptian one-god religion of Akhenaten and the one-god religion of the early tribes of Abraham got into trouble when the ‘revelation’ of one man (Akhenaten and Moses) dismissed ALL the other gods/goddesses of those cultural indigenous religions and declared ‘there are no others but me’!

The three Abrahamic religions that are in practiced, in today’s world, each state that there is only one god, according to three separate messengers speaking their three separate revelations. Why can’t they agree? Because there are CULTURAL and indigenous differences between them! Revelations are the stuff of one or two or three people’s minds! It does not come from the soul of a people! Look at any culture that came into contact with any form of a revealed religion and see what happened and happens.

Instead of ‘praying’ for a non-believer to come around to your point of view…it meant be better to just say … May you be happy and at peace within yourself. May all beings know peace.